pronounced upon his race, of "earning his bread by the sweat of his brow." The revolutions inseparable from all governments having a popular form and an ignorant population, more than once occurred in the Mexican Republic during this period, but they disturbed not the repose and welfare of Texas. Separated from the interior by the ocean, in one direction, and by an immense desert of several hundred miles extent in the other, she flourished in peace, and increased in products and population, not caring, and hardly knowing whether Iterbide, Bustamente or St. Anna was de facto or de jure, al the head of the Federal Government. In the midst of this peace, repose, and unexampled prosperity, a political destroyer appeared in the person of the President Santa Anna-a soldier of fortune who had risen lo the first station in the republic by his devotion to those principles of constitutional liberty and republican government which he has now, at last, betrayed and deserted-preferring lo be classed in the page of history among the Caesars and Bonapartes, rather than the Bolivars and Washinglons. With a rude and unceremonious hand, the President St Anna- leagued with the Priests, those eternal enemies of liberty and human rights in every age and country- has prostrated Mexican Liberty and the Mexican Constitution, and under the never failing pretence of tyrants- "the good of the people;" has abolished all the rights of the States- annihilated the very existence of the Stale Legislatures- established a central, consolidated, military government-and now offers to our free countrymen in Texas the cruel alternative, either lo abandon their homes and estates, earned by so many privations, or to submit to the most intolerable of all tyrannies, the combined despotism of the sword and the Priesthood. Thus have they been forced into a contest for the preservation of every principle worth maintaining, and driven to a third alternative, not contemplated by the Priests and the usurper,-war-defiance-revolution-lhe last and solemn appeal of oulraged nations from the decisions of their tyrants lo the God of ballles. Their cause is the universal cause of man. Their object the enjoyment of that constitutional liberty and Republican Government which the United Stales, by its example and influence, has morally guaranteed to all nations. And shall they in this vital struggle, in the common cause of mankind, receive no countcna11cc, t~nco11ragcment, sympathy, or assistance·~
Powered by FlippingBook